Flying Over Amsterdam? Eyes Down for this Megaportrait

She won’t survive long beyond Christmas day, if current weather forecasts are to be believed, but this giant soil-straw-and-sand portrait of a woman—the biggest ever in the Netherlands—is certainly making her mark while she lasts. Covering the area of two football pitches the 'megaportrait' was commissioned by Dutch women’s-rights organization Mama Cash to highlight the sometimes life-threatening problems faced by female activists in Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala: "The identity of the model for the portrait is deliberately anonymous," says Babette Roelandschap, spokesperson for the group's Vogenvrije Vrouwen campaign (which roughly translates to women, free as birds). "Because that’s exactly the predicament of the women whose plight we are trying to draw attention to. Many of these women have simply disappeared." The work took Cuban-American artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada and a band of 80 volunteers five days to complete, and is surprisingly close to the center of Amsterdam. Tell us if you see it on your way to or from Schiphol!